July 23

July 23, 2004

OUR WORLD IS ABOUT TO CHANGE

The next big revolution in the computer industry is going to take place in the 4^th quarter of this year. Here is a list of what we already know is coming:

SOFTWARE - Microsoft will officially release “Longhorn”. The 64bit operating system has been beat up, put down, praised, loved, and hated. Your opinion is your own and you are entitled to it. I have yet to play with the beta version so I currently have no opinion. However, past experience with Microsoft would tell me to sit and wait. CORRECTION: The release of Longhorn will not take place until at least 2006. Longhorn will be the replacement for Windows XP. The 64bit version of Windows XP is already available from a few tier 1 builders but the official release to the mainstream market is set for Q4 this year.

CPU - Intel has already changed the CPU platform from FCPGA (Flip Chip Pin Grid Array) to LGA (Land Grid Array). No more bent pins to straighten out with a razor blade. That’s the first thing that comes to mind. These new processors and sockets move from 478 pins to 775 contacts. Although the loss of pins seems to be a good thing, most of the reviews we have seen haven’t been very pleased with the fragility of the socket. Care and exactness must always be exercised when installing a CPU. The reviews I read seemed to be having problems re-installing the CPU’s. We’ll see how that goes. The best thing I noticed about this new platform is that the pressure applied to the board by the mounting of the heatsink is no longer. This keeps the board flat and no bending or “tweaking” occurs. Cache is increased as well. The minimum L3 cache is now 1MB with Extreme processors carrying 2MB. Currently the 2MB version of the LGA processor is not available to us but will be coming in the next few months. Intel is taking the same path that AMD took a few years ago. Instead of identifying processors by clock speed they are putting model numbers on them. This will take some getting used to but we have gone through this before. The LGA775 is currently available with the Prescott core with 1MB L3 cache in these models: 530 (3.0Ghz) 540 (3.2Ghz) 550 (3.4Ghz). The 560 (3.6Ghz) should be showing up any time now.

CHIPSET - Along with the new processor platform comes new chipsets. The 915 and 925 chipsets are already released. There are several neat features about these new chipsets but there are 2 things that I think are really neat. First, the front side bus speed is getting bumped to 1,066 Mhz. Speed freaks are cheering all over the world. Second, is the Centrino technology moving to the desktop market. Embedded wireless technology is going to be commonplace. The really cool feature about this is the ability to make any machine an access point. No more WAP’s. Just set the BIOS as WAP enabled or disabled and anyone on your network can use that machine as their access point. The simplicity of the setup is awesome.

AUDIO - In the past embedded audio has never been a real performer. Over the past year or so most motherboard manufacturers have put 5.1 digital on their higher end boards. Now, 7.1 digital is going to be the standard. There is a lot to talk about here so I am just going to suggest that you Google or Yahoo 7.1 digital and read all about it. There are some really neat features.

FORMFACTOR - Motherboard formfactor is going from ATX (Advanced Technology eXtended) to BTX (Balanced Technology eXtended). The main reason for this is heat. We are now producing more heat than our current equipment was designed for. The obvious differences in these two formfactors is that the rear I/O and the expansion slots will change places. Currently, ATX is inefficient in cooling due to the airflow. Air must travel from the front bottom of the case to the top rear creating turbulence and noise. With the relocation of components, air will travel across the CPU heatsink first and then the graphics card – the two hottest components. BTX power supplies will also be different. If you have built any Xeon, Athlon64, or Opteron boxes then you are aware of the 24pin/8pin power supplies. These will now be standard in every system.

HARD DRIVES – This should not come as a surprise to anyone. Parallel ATA is being phased out. Serial ATA will become the norm and more controllers will be added to the board. Currently the only way to get 4 SATA controllers on a board is with RAID. Since you can only connect one hard drive up to a SATA controller, the additional controllers will be required. Don’t expect PATA to disappear all at once. It will be phased out slowly. You will probably see the secondary PATA controller fall off first and then eventually the Primary. Since the smallest SATA hard drive available right now is an 80GB, say goodbye to all drives smaller than that.

RAM – This is my favorite part for a very selfish reason. Every day, we get orders for people wanting to upgrade their PC100 and PC133 RAM. This stuff is getting more expensive everyday because it is about to go away. DDR2 will be the standard for new systems. With BUS speeds of 400, 533, and 667 it is necessary to keep up with the rest of the system.

EXPANSION SLOTS – PCI is not going away but it is moving over for PCI-X 2.0. PCI-X 2.0 is a new, higher speed version of the conventional PCI standard, which supported signaling speeds up to 533 megatransfers per second (MTS). Revision 1.0 of the PCI-X specification defined PCI-X 66 and PCI-X 133 devices that transferred data up to 133 MTS, or over 1Gbyte per second for a 64-bit device. The present revision adds two new speed grades: PCI-X 266 and PCI-X 533, offering up to 4.3 gigabytes per second of bandwidth, 32 times faster than the first generation of PCI. Another major feature of the PCI-X 2.0 specification is enhanced system reliability. ECC support has been added both for the header and payload, providing automatic single-bit error recovery and double-bit error detection.

EXTERNAL INPUTS – Firewire (IEEE 1394) is about to double it’s throughput to 800Mbps. USB 2.0 should answer that call shortly.

GRAPHICS – Nothing in this industry changes faster than video technology. With the new PCI slots mentioned above, we will see a new market for Nvidia and ATI to embrace. This is the one area that I didn’t research because by the time I read about it, it’s already old news. We’ll just sit back and watch this one unfold. I’m sure some of you are already up to speed on this. Feel free to send me feedback.

The next generation of computing is just around the corner. It should revamp the industry and create demand. This is exactly what we need. Maybe the hayday isn’t over just yet.

If I made mistakes in any of the above info, please feel free to shake your finger at me.

S&K